


Laimaudra

by CreamofTomatoSoup



Category: Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Ace Cloud Strife, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Aro Cloud Strife, Avalanche being Avalanche, Character Study, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:54:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24656410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreamofTomatoSoup/pseuds/CreamofTomatoSoup
Summary: He remembers being fifteen, Lai a warm weight settled around his shoulders.  But that can’t be right, because he also remembers being seventeen, and Lai in front of him on a metal catwalk, huge in red light, snarling, too big to carry.  He remembers being fourteen and his mom’s daemon saying, “Well, it’s a fine form to settle in,” while Lai winds around his legs, purring, and he remembers being nineteen and Lai’s tail wagging, tongue lolling out of her mouth, looking up at someone else with warmth and affection.He remembers being… bitter.  Smug.  Looking down on the sprawling city of metal and lights.  Lai’s talons sunk into his arm.That can’t be right.  It can’t all be right.Cloud doesn’t think about it.  Lai settled as a lithe, muscular bobcat, eyes mako-green, just like his.  She’s never been a tabby cat or a wolf or… something else.  He must be misremembering.He doesn’t think about it.  That’s all.
Relationships: Cloud Strife & Laimaudra, Tifa Lockhart & Cloud Strife
Comments: 37
Kudos: 123





	Laimaudra

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Medli45](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medli45/gifts).



> This is based on breezy-cheesy's lovely daemon au, which you can find here:
> 
> https://breezy-cheezy.tumblr.com/search/ff7+daemon+au
> 
> Knock yourselves OUT

Cloud has this memory of childhood.

It’s fairly early on. Before he made that promise to Tifa, after he followed her up the slopes of Mt. Nibel. He’s about nine, maybe ten. He’s outgrown his pants and shirt, again, and he’s stuck wearing his dad’s old oversized workshirt and shorts while his mom restitches his clothes, and he feels gangly and awkward and too small and too big, all at once.

He’s outside. The air is gray and damp. The kids around him are jeering. Someone shoves him and he goes tumbling, tripping over his oversized pants leg, landing on his back in the frozen mud.

Lai hisses and spits. All the fur along her spine bristles, her tail fluffed up to three times its size. She’s planted in front of him, tiny for all that she tries, and other children are laughing.

“She don’t want you around,” one of the boys says. He’s the leader, swaggering and intimidating. His daemon shifts between a raccoon and a thick, heavyset badger, larger and tougher shapes then Lai can stretch into. “Don’t her dad tell you?”   
  
Cloud rubs his mouth.  _ Don’t cry, _ he thinks, stubborn.  _ Don’t be weak. _

“Tifa don’t want a snivelling lil crybaby,” the boy sneers. His daemon looms over Lai, baring her teeth. “You don’t stand a chance wif her, y’here me?”

And- here’s the thing.

Cloud doesn’t want to be friends with Tifa because she’s pretty, or because she has a nice laugh. She is pretty, don’t get him wrong, and her laugh is nice too. But Cloud wants to be friends with Tifa because she’ll crack open chestnuts for Cloud when they’re scuttling around the wild trees, because she’s got a punch like a freight train, because she’s so bullheaded that she clawed her way up a frozen mountain in search of her dead mom.

Tifa’s amazing. Cloud has no idea how the other kids keep missing it, cause they’re always trying to be friends with Tifa by complimenting her hair and eyes, by offering to do things or fetch things for her. Tifa hates that. Tifa is so blazingly, fiercely independent. Cloud wants to be strong like her.

“S-she can have more’n one friend,” Cloud manages. His voice is higher than he’d like.

The boy stares at him for a second, and then barks out a laugh. “Y’think we’re talkin’ ‘bout  _ friends?” _

Cloud blinks, because what else could they be talking about, when a bird lands on the boy’s daemon and claws her face with a wild shriek.

The boy and the badger yelp at the same time, flinching and scrambling backwards. The bird follows, turning smoothly into a hare, punching out with clawed forepaws. The badger howls and snaps at the other daemon, but the hare dances out of reach, leaping and changing forms fluidly, to crow, to wolverine, to monkey.

Arluin, Cloud realizes, just as Tifa slides into place between him and the other kids, standing next to Lai and just as ready to defend him.

“Go away, Lurin,” she snaps. “Leave ‘im the hell alone!”

She is a strong silhouette against the winter sky, fists balled up, shoulders ready, strong and brave and wonderful. Lai circles her legs, excited, staring up at her and purring, changing from tabby cat to ferret to tabby cat again.

“Lai!” Cloud hisses, embarrassed, but Lai just gives him a look. She’s excited to see Tifa, not as nervous as he is, about how vulnerable they look, about Tifa having to rescue them.

“He started it,” Lurin is whining.

“Bullshit,” Tifa barks. “Get!”

They get. Arluin snaps one last time at the badger’s heels as they hastily retreat, and watches the alleyway entrance with twitching ears. Tifa turns to Cloud, leans down to offer him her hand.

“Are you okay?” she asks, concerned.

Cloud stares at her offered hand for a second, feels caught between sullen anger and admiration. Tifa’s fierce and uncompromising, even with people who talk like they’re fighting for her, and that’s a kind of strength all by itself. But- he could’ve handled it. He doesn’t want to be weak.

“Yeah,” he manages, takes her hand. Lets her pull him up to his feet. “... thanks, Tifa.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tifa says. “What’d they want with you?”

Arluin has come loping back, apparently satisfied that the other kids are gone. He changes fluidly from mongoose to a tabby cat, matching Lai. He touches noses to her, rumbling, and she greets him by ramming her forehead into his, purring like an engine. Lai always stays in small-ish shapes, mostly mammals. She’s choosing the tabby cat more and more often. That Arluin changes to match her, even though Cloud knows he prefers birds or squirrels or monkeys, makes Cloud feel some weird mix of gratefulness and shame.

He watches him now instead of meeting Tifa’s eyes. It’s basically the same thing, anyway, and Cloud can feel Arluin assuring Lai by brushing his cheek along her chin, a ghostly sensation across his own face.

“... y’know,” he mutters. “Just. Stuff.”

“Stuff,” Tifa repeats, flatly. Cloud shrinks. “They’m shoving you around cause of _ stuff.” _

Cloud shrugs. Tifa frowns at him. Lai’s purring grows quieter, but doesn’t fully stop. Arluin rubs against her shoulder and side, and Cloud feels the echo of that, too, partner to Tifa’s hand still gripping his.

“It was fine,” Cloud lies, blatantly.

Tifa purses her mouth. Her eyes are red and her hair is iron gray and there’s something steely in her expression. But she doesn’t say anything and Cloud doesn’t say anything, even though Arluin is watching Lai.

Tifa is stubborn, but Cloud always wins the silence contests. Tifa finally glares at her shoes, and Arluin glances away.

“Dad’s making cookies,” he says in his soft voice.

Cloud and Lai wince, in tandem. Tifa’s dad is a huge, lumbering man, and he shouted so loud and long at Cloud, after Mt. Nibel. The image of his anger is towering and hot and imprinted in Cloud’s brain.

“We’ll go home,” Lai says. She doesn’t move as she says it, and neither does Cloud; they don’t want to leave. They want Tifa to insist, they want Arluin to coax them, they want proof that Tifa really does want them to come along.

But Tifa purses frowns.

“Okay,” she says, and Cloud’s heart sinks. Lai shrinks, even while Arluin noses her. “... We’ll just. See you around, then.”

Cloud can’t say anything for a minute. Forces his mouth to unstick.

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “See you around.”

\---

That memory sticks. The picture of Tifa, frowning as she listens to his feeble excuses, but accepting them. Knowing he’s full of shit but letting him get away with it.

Few other memories of his childhood are crystal and sharp like that. There’s running after Tifa up the freezing slopes of Mt. Nibel. The promise made perched on the water tower, under the clear starry sky. His mom laughing. The taste of bread. The smell of diesel. Mud, frozen into slush.

The rest of his childhood is blurry, but everyone talks like their childhood is a vague, half-remembered thing, so Cloud thinks this is normal. What starts to get… different… is that the timeline seems to fade going into his teenage years, getting warped and uncertain.

He remembers being fifteen, Lai a warm weight settled around his shoulders. But that can’t be right, because he also remembers being seventeen, and Lai in front of him on a metal catwalk, huge in red light, snarling, too big to carry. He remembers being fourteen and his mom’s daemon saying, “Well, it’s a fine form to settle in,” while Lai winds around his legs, purring, and he remembers being nineteen and Lai’s tail wagging, tongue lolling out of her mouth, looking up at someone else with warmth and affection.

He remembers being… bitter. Smug. Looking down on the sprawling city of metal and lights. Lai’s talons sunk into his arm.

That can’t be right. It can’t _ all _ be right.

Cloud doesn’t think about it. Lai settled as a lithe, muscular bobcat, eyes mako-green, just like his. She’s never been a tabby cat or a wolf or… something else. He must be misremembering.

He doesn’t think about it. That’s all.

\---

That works until Tifa corners him in his tiny room, arms crossed as she leans against the door.

“So, uh,” she says. “I was wondering about something.”

Cloud glances up at her from where he sits on his cot, taking off his boots. The room is roughly the size of a closet, and it still feels bigger than it should be. Cloud remembers sleeping in cots in barracks, stacked on top of each other, Lai curled up on his chest. He remembers feeling like he’s floating, in a tiny space, sleeping upright.

He can stand up in here and stretch out both arms and not touch the sides. It’s close, but it’s doable.

“What?” he asks, shortly.

“About Lai,” Tifa says.

Lai glances up from where she’s curled up on the floor. She tends to be mostly silent these days, talking to Cloud and no one else. Her muscles are visible beneath her thick bobcat fur, her claws the length of Cloud’s pinky. 

Arluin, by contrast, has settled as something small. His dark eyes peek out from under the curtain of Tifa’s hair, a flying rodent the size of a large rabbit. Tifa has explained that he’s a yellow bellied glider, and Cloud has still been fumbling with how to ask if that’s a kind of squirrel or not.

Cloud thought for sure Arluin would settle as something big; something to match his larger-than-life image of Tifa in childhood. But Tifa’s changed in ways he hadn’t thought possible, too. She’s quiet. Her bright, jagged pride is gone. She seems more tired and more beaten down, polite even to the jackasses at the bar that child-Tifa would’ve beaten the shit out of.

It makes Cloud’s stomach hurt, because it feels like- it looks like Tifa’s been broken. He knows that’s not the case, knows it probably just means Tifa has mellowed since childhood, but it still feels- off. Wrong.

He pushes that thought back. Focuses.

“What about her?”

“Did… did something happen?”

Cloud and Lai glance at each other. Lai’s eyes are mako green and her pupils are still blown wide, even as their confusion thrums along their connection. She’s still happy to see them. Cloud’s chest is warm everytime he looks at Tifa, affection and nostalgia together.

Lai doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Neither does Cloud.

“Like… what?” he asks.

Tifa bites her lip, hand cupping one elbow. Arluin winds out of her hair and slides into the crook of her arm.

“You were…” Arluin says, in his soft voice, addressing Lai. Lai blinks at him, startled. Cloud’s startled, too, unused to other people talking to her. “I thought… you were a tabby cat.”

Something at the back of Cloud’s head itches like crazy. Lai is blinking, hard.  _ Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. _

She can’t have been a tabby cat. Well, she chose that form a lot when they were little, but she’s a bobcat now. Daemons don’t change after settling. She must have just- settled late. When Cloud was sixteen, or maybe a little older, nevermind that daemons are always settled before that age.

He remembers Lai loping through the snow, a thick-furred canine, following Tifa with her ridiculous hat. He remembers Lai, small, patting his face and purring, while he lies down in the barracks. He remembers Lai, spreading her huge, dark wings, turning to regard him with a blood-red eye.

Cloud grunts, turning his head to the side. It’s not an answer.

Tifa is frowning, watching him with her mouth pressed into a thin line.

“... Wull, if you ever wanna talk,” she says, finally, standing up from the door, “I’m just- down the hall.”

Cloud grunts again, except its Tifa, and Tifa deserves a proper answer. Lai’s tail flicks and Cloud glances back up at Tifa, meeting her eyes.

“Right,” he says. “... Thanks, Tifa.”

Tifa looks relieved. “‘Course. You’re always welcome, Cloud.”

Always welcome. Lai bumps her head against his elbow as Tifa leaves, closing the door behind her. 

If only he felt like it.

\---

Avalanche is… an experience.

“Do y’think eating a cactuar counts as cannibalism,” Wedge says.

Cloud stares at him. The lights overhead buzz faintly with warm, yellow light. Seventh Heaven has mostly emptied out this time of night, leaving just the core Avalanche group- and Cloud, he guesses. And Tifa. Cloud’s still putting together how she got into an eco-terrorist organization slash freedom fighter coalition slash group of dumbasses.

Wedge isn’t even talking to him. He’s by the dart board with Biggs and Jessie, staring at the wall. A plastic container is strapped to his back, filled with water, his minnow daemon swimming in circles in it.

“What? No,” Biggs says. His daemon is a huge, fluffy dog that looks more like a bear. “It’s a plant. Throw!”

“No, wait, they got those little faces,” Jessie says.

“That means jackshit, everything’s got a face.”

“But like, a people-ish sort of face,” Jessie’s daemon pipes up. He doesn’t have the same scruples about talking to humans that daemons usually have, which… makes sense. Jessie is a very bright and talkative person.

“Right?!” Wedge says, throwing up his hands and nearly stabbing Biggs with the dart. “They got arms and legs-”

“Monkeys have arms and legs!”

“And those little silly faces-”

“They aren’t silly! They _ eat _ people!” Biggs says. “Throw!”

“I’m gonna hit my foot again,” Wedge whines, but he throws the dart and hits the board just fine. Biggs and Jessie whoop in unison.

Cloud is sitting at the bar, tired after chasing after cats all day for a little girl and clearing debris for an old man and a thousand other chores literally any of the security guards wandering the area could do if they could be bothered to lift a finger. He is done with people for the day, but his room is cold and metal and- something. It makes him uneasy. Seventh Heaven is wooden panels and light and splinters, and much, much better.

Tifa is scrubbing down the bar, looking dead tired. Arluin is relaxed so flat on her head he looks like an extremely tacky bandana. Barret is upstairs somewhere, reading to his kid, and Cloud should probably leave before he comes back down. He’s been looking for a reason to punch out Cloud, and his daemon is a huge ox. Cow. Thing. Lai’s fast, but Cloud doesn’t want to risk it.

“Okay, new rule,” Jessie says. “We get to ask, like, an existential crisis sort of question. And you get five seconds to throw the dart and answer the question. And if you fuck up you take a shot.”

“Wait, I’m no good under pressure,” Wedge says. Biggs laughs at him.

“Biggs can go first.”

“Damnit.”

Across the bar from him, Tifa meets his eyes. She looks dead inside.

_ Kill me, _ she mouths.

_ Okay,  _ he mouths back, and reaches back like he’s gonna draw his sword. Tifa snorts. Cloud smirks and sips from his drink like a badass.

“If a human eats a daemon, is  _ that  _ cannibalism?”

Cloud swallows down the wrong pipe and coughs loud, barking coughs. Across the room, Biggs stumbles and the dart misses the board completely, and Wedge makes a horrified noise.

“What the shit, Jessie!”

“It’s a legitimate question!” Jessie replies, throwing up her hands. “Also, take a shot.”

Tifa whacks Cloud on the back a few times. He manages to clear his throat. He’s spilled alcohol all down his shirt. Goddamnit.

“It’s a terrible question!”

“Is this what goes through your head on a day-to-day basis?” Biggs asks. His daemon is rearing up on her hindlegs, swatting at Jessie’s jackdaw daemon, who just flaps above her reach and circles around to tug at her tail. “Is your mind just a minefield of bullshit thoughts-”

“I’m a genius, how dare you. Take a shot.”

“You’re a sociopath,” Biggs says, trudging over to the bar.

“Who’s paying for these?” Tifa says, not bothering to move. She whacks Cloud one last time, for good measure, and Arluin wiggles off her head, landing on the bar and leaning down to sniff at Lai.

“Jessie,” Biggs says, at the same time as Jessie says, “Biggs.”

“I’ll pay for two,” Wedge says, a beacon of generosity.

“Biggs,” Jessie says insistently. Bigg’s daemon rears up and manages to swat at her jackdaw, who caws, offended. Tifa and Cloud share a look. It’s great to be on the same wavelength as somebody, even if that wavelength is _ my god these guys are dumbasses. _

“Jessie asked the question,” Biggs says.

“That’s not the rules-”

“That’s absolutely the rules,” Biggs declares. “You can ask questions as long as you pay for the shot if the person fails.”

“That doesn’t work, that’s incentive to fail-”

“Works for me!” Wedge says cheerfully. Jessie groans and gives up, and Tifa laughs and pours something dark into the little shot glass. Biggs drinks it in one go.

The others spend an hour like that. Wedge’s little daemon swims in excited circles in her tank, occasionally piping up in her soft, high voice, and Bigg’s dog and Jessie’s jackdaw swat and laugh at each other in equal measure. Arluin touches noses with Lai, carefully, which she allows. When she turns her head away, Arluin backs off, and that fills Cloud with a mix of gratefulness and shame. Tifa cleans a cup out with a rag, smiling down at the counter.

Cloud knows he should leave. He shouldn’t sit here, nursing his paint thinner drink, intruding on this group that he’s not really a part of. Not family in the same way they are.

He can’t help himself. He remembers being five, always on the outside of other kid’s groups, never part of the friend circles, not really in any of their games. Remembers being quiet and lonely, Lai small in his arms, with only his mom and dad and the elderly neighbor and Tifa for friends, and not being sure even about Tifa.

He’ll leave when Tifa leaves, he tells himself. They live next door to each other now, close enough that he’ll hear if anything comes to hurt her, close enough that if she decides to do something crazy like run up Mt. Nibel in the dead of winter, he’ll feel her footsteps through the floor and be able to follow.

“But is it autocannibalism-”

“Enough with the cannibalism questions!” Biggs shouts, throwing up his hands. Tifa shushes him from across the room, so he continues, quieter, _ “No more cannibalism questions.” _

“Does it count if it's an  _ auto- _ cannibalism question?” Jessie’s jackdaw says.

“Yes!” Biggs’ dog growls.

“I mean, yeah,” Wedge’s little minnow pipes up, her voice distorted by the water.

“Screw this, Jessie an’ Tybalt are banned from asking questions,” Biggs says.

“Hey!” Jessie says, laughing and shoving Biggs shoulder, her jackdaw chattering at him in displeasure. Biggs grins at them and turns to look at- the bar?

“Cloud!” Biggs says, cheerful. “You’re up.”

Cloud and Lai stare at him because what the shit. Tifa turns away from them, hand over her mouth, hiding a laugh, Arluin snorting on the counter. Wedge and Jessie look delighted. Biggs looks way too pleased with himself.

“Yeah!” Wedge beams.

“No,” Cloud tries, and gets ignored, as usual.

“Yes, I will absolutely take Cloud as a substitute,” Jessie says, beckoning to Cloud with her whole arm. “C’mon, merc!”

“Five hundred gil,” Cloud tries, picking a number mostly at random. Wedge and Jessie groan.

“I will buy you  _ one  _ drink,” Biggs says. His big dog daemon has trotted closer, standing a polite distance from Lai, waving her tail hopefully.

Tifa is laughing, softly, and looks less tired than she’s been all night. Cloud glances at her, a quick slide of his eyes, and when he looks back at Biggs the man’s face has softened, face open.

“C’mon, Cloud,” he says, and Wedge and Jessie behind him start chanting “Cloud! Cloud! Cloud!” and out of the corner of his eyes Tifa is smiling.

“Fine,” Cloud allows. The others burst out into whooping cheers until Barret upstairs thumps angrily on the floor.

“Ok, ok, so-” Biggs says, excited, shepherding Cloud over to the dartboard, “Here’s the rules-”

Cloud lets them usher him into place while chattering about the game. Biggs’ dog is excited and gently nosing Lai’s side, and Cloud can feel it, muted, soft nudges against his ribs. Wedge’s little minnow swims in excited circles, and Jackie’s bird croaks and tries to land on Lai, who shakes him off irritably, but is otherwise tolerant.

“Dibs on first question,” Jessie says.

“You’re banned,” Biggs replies. Jessie groans and flops melodramatically over a table. “Cloud’s here cause you only have terrible questions. Wedge gets to ask.”

“Wait, I thought Cloud got to ask,” Wedge says. Cloud hopes not. Honestly thinking of a question sounds more difficult than throwing a dart and answering. 

“Cloud gets to throw _ one  _ dart and ask  _ one  _ question,” Biggs says. Dammit, Cloud thinks.

“But I don’t have a question!” Wedge says, waving his hands.

“So think of one,” Biggs says, easily. “Hey, do y’know how to throw darts or are you gonna skewer one of us?”

Cloud gives him his best deadpan stare. Lai disdainfully flicks her tail in the dog’s face, making her sneeze and making Biggs wrinkle his nose and throw up in his hands in surrender.

“Okay, okay,” he laughs, and then hands Cloud a dart. “Wedge, you ready?”

“No!” Wedge squeaks. “Wait, uh- yes! I got one!”

Cloud sizes up the board. It’s a shitty wooden thing with painted circles, not the sleek one in the barracks, not the simulated one in… in… something. SOLDIER training.

“So ask,” Cloud says, holding the dart between two fingers.

“Do you like us?” Wedge says.

“No,” Cloud says instantly, throwing the dart and hitting it dead center, while Biggs and Jessie groan and protest.  _ Bam. _ He’s a badass.

“You don’t like us?” Jessie squawks.

“That’s not an existential crisis question!” Biggs protests.

“It is to  _ me!”  _ Wedge says. “I don’t know what to do when people hate me!”

“Cloud doesn’t hate you,” Biggs says. Cloud opens his mouth to confirm, ‘cause he really doesn’t hate any of them, but Biggs jams an elbow into his ribs. 

“He said he doesn’t like us!” Wedge says. “I need people to like me!”

“You joined a terrorist cell.”

“I mean yeah, but like, no one knows that.”

“We’re very likable people!” Jessie says, offended. Her jackdaw is swooping down on Lai, plucking at her fur and cawing angrily. “What’s there not to like?”

Cloud huffs and glances away, folding his arms. Their overlapping voices are getting hard to process. Lai’s hunkered down, swatting at Jessie’s jackdaw on occasion, irritated.

“Uh, your horrible cannibalism questions?” Biggs says, before Jessie can demand an answer. “C’mon, Wedge, existential crisis later. It’s Cloud’s turn to ask a question.”

“I can’t answer,” Wedge moans into his hands. “I’m going into shock.”

“Oh my god, you big baby,” Jessie says, dropping her head back down onto the table.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” Biggs says. He pries the dart out of the dartboard and backs up. “What’s your question, Cloud?”

“Why do you get to do it?” Jessie demands.

They start arguing back and forth. Cloud tries to think of a question. An existential crisis sort of question.

He doesn’t know what… counts. He doesn’t know what causes him an existential crisis. There’s what he doesn’t want to remember, and there’s what Lai doesn’t want to remember either, pushing her head into his chest and rumbling when they dream at night.

He thinks about remembering, and trying not to remember, and Lai as a wolf as a cat as a huge, dark winged bird, and he doesn’t know how to talk about it, but… that’s not an existential crisis. That’s just- whatever’s wrong with his head.

There’s the huge gap in his memory, fogged, from early teenagehood into waking up at the train station. There’s the sword he knows is his but still sometimes feels unfamiliar in his hands.

He could ask  _ is it okay to not want to remember things,  _ but the others will think he’s broken, or traumatized or something. He could ask  _ is it weird to dream you’re someone else, _ or  _ do you guys see stuff that isn’t there sometimes, _ or  _ is there a bird that makes dissolving black feathers or is that another hallucination, _ or…

“Alrighty, Cloud,” Biggs says, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He sounds smug, his dog wagging her tail and grinning a doggy sort of grin, Jessie’s jackdaw pinned beneath her giant paws. Jessie looks grouchy but not totally upset. “What’s your question.”

Cloud presses his mouth into a thin line, tries to think. Picks the first thing that sounds halfway reasonable.

“Can adult daemons change form?” he asks.

“No,” Biggs says, and the dart sails through the air and hits the innermost circle. 

“What kinda question is that?” Jessie asks grouchily. 

Cloud can feel Tifa staring at him from behind the bar, her gaze like a weight on his neck. He feels pinned in place. He can’t turn around and meet her eyes, he doesn’t know what’ll happen.

“I’ve never heard of one changing form,” Wedge says uncertainly. “But maybe anything’s possible?”

“You’ve never heard of it ‘cause it’s not a thing,” Jessie says. But then she frowns. “I mean, we grow and change as people, but like… like I’m definitely not the person I was when Tybalt settled, but he’s still a jackdaw.”

“Same for Meira,” Biggs says. He glances at Cloud, bemused, and looks at Wedge. “And I mean, you’re definitely not the same person you were before you joined up, and Berdine’s still a minnow.”

“Well, yeah,” Wedge says, scratching the back of his head.

Cloud breathes out, slowly through his teeth. He doesn’t want to be here, he doesn’t want to turn and face Tifa. He can’t do it.

He’s halfway to the door before he realizes he’s doing it, Lai hot on his heels. He sees Tifa out of the corner of his eye, watching him, eyes dark and red.

“Wait- Cloud!” Jessie shouts after him, and Wedge says something, and Biggs says, “Dude, what’s wrong?”

_ I don’t know, _ Cloud thinks, and shuts the door behind him.

\---

When the city burned in the aftermath of the bombing, the fire had flickered green, electric, and back to orange and red again, and they had chased down someone Cloud knew was dead.

“Stay close,” Lai had growled, flickering and static, a huge, gray wolf. “We killed him before, we can do it again.”

“He’s supposed to be dead,” Cloud had said, but Lai leaned against him, huge and shaggy, and Cloud dug his fingers into her fur.

They’d stumbled after the flash of silver hair, the slow moving man with his back turned on them. He had no daemon. Cloud stumbled after him and  _ he had no daemon. _

Except…

They’d turned that corner, and Lai had changed beneath his fingers, staticky and groaning in pain.

She was a huge, dark winged bird, and there was a sudden, jarring disconnect, and the knowledge _ this wasn’t his daemon. _

Cloud had jerked his hand away like he’d been burned, and the hulking vulture groaned on the ground, spreading its huge dark wings, and the fire blazed around them orange and white and green, and Sephiroth smiled at him.

She was Lai, and she was Cloud’s heart, and she was a stranger, and she was Sephiroth’s soul, and she stood halfway between them and bristled with static, beak open, panting, eyes glittering green.

“You’re… dead,” Cloud had slurred, bent halfway over, sweating with heat.

“Am I?” said Sephiroth, and his hand came down, and he combed his fingers through Lai’s feathers, and Cloud couldn’t feel it because  _ she wasn’t his. _

\---

He wakes up, Lai shoving insistently at him.

“I’m your heart,” she whispers in the dark, her weight familiar on his chest. Her eyes are wide and green, and her bobcat face is nose-to-nose with his. “I’m your heart, your heart, your heart.”

Cloud makes a horrible, pained noise.

“You change,” he says, faintly, weakly.

Lai doesn’t have an answer. But she shoves her head beneath his chin, and purrs like an engine, so Cloud can feel it through his whole body like a second pulse, and he clings to her fur, terrified that one day he’ll wake up and she’ll belong to someone else.

He doesn’t want to be weak. He wants Tifa to burst through the door and chase the ghost of Sephiroth away, and he wants her to never, ever meet Sephiroth, and he wants to be safe and he wants to be strong and unafraid.

_ Don’t be weak,  _ he thinks, and clings to Lai anyway.


End file.
